Authors: David Jack Bell

The Girl in the Woods (36 page)

BOOK: The Girl in the Woods

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"I'm looking for my sister."

"Your sister?" The man looked confused. He pointed at the Foley girl. "Is she your sister?"

"No. My sister's name is Rachel. She disappeared five years ago. She was fifteen. Do you know her?"

The man still looked confused. "I didn't mean to kill that girl."

"Who? Rachel? Did you hurt Rachel?"

"That girl right there." He pointed again. It was difficult to see in the dark, but it appeared as though the man were starting to cry. He sniffled and wiped at his face with his giant hands. "I didn't mean to hurt her. I didn't want to. They were going to come and take me away and send me to jail. The cop came and I didn't mean to kill him, but he wanted to take the girl away, and then I knew he would take me."

Diana looked around and saw another grave on the far side of the clearing.
Jason?

"You killed a police officer?"

"The clearing told me I had to."

His words gave Diana a chill. She wasn't the only one to be drawn by the place. It really did send out messages, except in his case, the messages led to deaths.

Diana stood up. She reached for and brought out the Glock.

"I used to be a police officer. You're going to have to talk to somebody about all this. You're going to have to answer for this. Put your hands on top of your head"

"No..."

"Put them up."

"No."

"Yes. If you need help, you'll get it. But we have to get out of here. Put your hands on top of your head now and turn around."

The man slowly did as he had been told. He brought his thick hands up and rested them on top of his head. While he did so, Diana reached into her coat pocket with her free hand and took out her cell phone. She flipped it open and scrolled to Dan's number with her thumb. She hit send, but before she could speak, the pain came back, an explosion in her skull. It knocked the air out of her, and she fell to her knees, dropping the phone.

"No!"

Her vision clouded and everything went dark.

CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR

"Are we almost there?" Dan said.

To Ludwig, every tree and square foot of ground looked the same. He could have been tromping through the woods in Maine or California for all he knew. He was beginning to doubt himself.

"I'm not sure," he said. "To be honest, when I got close the last time, I felt something, a surge of adrenaline. Something I couldn't really explain logically, I suppose, but it came from the clearing and worked through me."

"Are you feeling that now?"

"No."

"So maybe we're in the wrong place?"

"I don't know..."

Berding's cell phone rang. He muttered a curse and dug into his pocket. While he fumbled with the device, Ludwig looked around more. Maybe they were in the wrong place. Maybe he'd screwed up.

"Diana?" Berding said. "Diana? Where are you? Diana?"

Ludwig waited. The Captain hit the send button, trying to return the call. He waited and waited.

"Nothing," he said. He tried again.

"You might not get a signal out here."

"But it rang once. And I'm getting her voicemail when I call back. Unless..."

"Unless the caller knows we're here," Ludwig said.

Berding sprang forward in a run, and Ludwig hustled to not be left behind.

* * *

Roger watched the girl writhe on the ground. Something was wrong with her. He still had his hands on his head, but he realized now he had his chance. The pressure grew inside him. He felt like he was going to burst. The girl lay helpless before him. He knew he had to take care of her just as he had taken care of the others. He knew the clearing wanted that.

He went to the girl, arms outstretched.

* * *

Diana came back to herself with a great weight pressing on her chest. Something scrambled at her pants and around her throat. Hands. Large, fumbling hands.

She knew it was the man in the clearing. She felt his body press against her, chest to chest, groin to groin. He was full and erect and trying to get her pants open. He must have done this to Jacqueline Foley. He could have done it to so many others.

Diana couldn't push him off. He was too big, and his hot breath blew on her neck like a grizzly bear's. She didn't have the gun anymore.

She reached for her left jacket pocket. Her arm had limited range of motion because of his weight, which pinned the arm to the ground. She moved her wrist and fingers. She could just touch the edge of her pocket and feel the fabric.

The man pushed harder. He undid the button on her jeans and worked on her fly.

The tips of her fingers brushed the canister of pepper spray. She stretched the fingers, wiggled them. She couldn't get a grip on it. He tugged on her fly and brought it down. His other hand applied greater pressure to her throat.

Diana knew time was short. She made a quick, jerking motion to the left. The pepper spray fell out and brushed against her hand. She missed it. Her hand scrambled in the dirt.

The man worked the zipper open and pulled on her pants. He worked them down a little, but as he moved to do that, he granted her a greater range of motion. She reached and touched the pepper spray. She wrapped two fingers around it and moved it. She tucked it into her palm and raised it in the air.

She didn't have time to aim. She might be firing it into her own face. She didn't care.

She depressed the button with her thumb and fired a stream of the liquid. It hit the man flush in the eyes.

He screamed and rolled off of her. He rolled into the Foley girl's grave and landed on top of her.

Diana rolled in the other direction. She started to run out of the clearing, but saw two figures approaching her. One of them had a gun. She stopped and scrambled back, searching on the ground for her own weapon.

"Diana! Diana!"

She recognized the voice.

Dan?

"Diana, are you okay?"

He held his gun on the man on the ground, who was still in the grave with his hands over his eyes, howling in pain.

"Diana?"

"I'm okay," she said. "I'm okay."

"What's going on here?" Dan said.

Diana took a deep breath. She didn't recognize the man with Dan. She didn't really care. At the moment, she hoped it was all over.

"This is a crime scene, Dan. That's the Foley girl's body right there."

CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE

Diana waited in the back of a cruiser in the driveway of the Donahue house while the crime scene was processed. Given the size of the scene and its remote location, it took most of the night. But she stayed awake in the back of the car. She wanted to know what was happening and didn't trust herself to sleep there, so close to the clearing.

Near daybreak, Dan came out to check on her. He slipped into the back of the cruiser, a paper cup of coffee in his hand.

"Well?" Diana said.

He shook his head. "We haven't found what you're looking for," he said. "It's the Foley girl. And Jason. And a body that might be Margaret Todd. The coroner says it looks like she's been dead about a month, but she could be about the right age. There's no obvious sign of trauma."

"Shit."

"Her mom's sending the dental records. She still has them after all these years."

"That doesn't surprise me."

"They should have the ID done in a few hours."

"I'd like to be the one to tell Mrs. Todd."

"Sure. You can come along. But there's no guarantee—"

"Dan, it's her. I know it's her."

Dan didn't contradict her, and she took his silence as a form of agreement. "We're still looking and will be for a while, so there's still a chance. We've found remains that go back a long way, maybe a hundred years. Doctor Ludwig says this doesn't surprise him at all. He's been researching the area for a long time."

"He's already asked to interview me for his book," Diana said. "Are you going to deputize him?"

Dan smiled, but it was forced. She understood that the weight of the night's revelations—especially if Margie Todd's body really did rest in that grave—would come down on him like the sun and the moon and stars. She only wished she could help him more.

"What do you think this place is?" Dan said. "What does it do to people?"

"It draws them here," Diana said. "It gets them to do things they might not ordinarily do."

"It turned this Donahue guy into a killer. He seems harmless enough away from there, but something changed him in that clearing."

"It changed me, too," Diana said.

"How?"

"Remember how you said I spend too much time on the sidelines? That it was easy for me to sit back and judge others without really putting myself out there? Remember?"

Dan smiled a little. "Do you remember any of the good things I said to you?"

"That was a good thing," Diana said. "You were right. I wasn't involved...with anything. In some way, this place got me to do that. I don't know if that was its intent, but it worked."

"You know, we're going to be looking out here for a long time," he said. "We might find something about Rachel."

"I doubt it. But it doesn't really matter."

"Why's that?"

"I don't know. Maybe I wasn't brought out here to find Rachel. Maybe I'm not meant to do that. Maybe I was just meant to stop this. Tonight. Maybe that's enough."

Dan looked thoughtful. "Do you believe that?"

Diana looked out the window of the cruiser where the horizon was just lightening.

"I'm working on it, Dan. I'm working on it."

CHAPTER FORTY-SIX

At noon that day, Diana drove to Kay Todd's trailer with Dan. They hadn't called in advance, but when they pulled to the front of the small, pathetic looking trailer, Kay was standing at the door, a cigarette in her hand. When she saw them, she started shaking her head.

"It might be best for me to stay in the car," Dan said.

"I think you're right."

Diana went up the steps and pulled the screen door open.

"No," Kay said, backing away from Diana and into the trailer. "Don't you dare show up here and tell me my baby's dead. Don't you dare do it. Goddamn you."

She collapsed to the floor, sobbing.

"It's not true," Kay said. "It's not true."

She beat at the floor with her withered fist.

Diana walked over and sat on the floor next to her. Kay tried to push her away, but Diana held on.

"No," she said, her voice growing quiet. "No."

"I'm sorry, Kay. I'm so sorry."

Kay leaned on Diana's shoulder and cried and cried.

When Kay calmed down, Diana helped her to the couch. Diana went to the kitchen and brought Kay a glass of water, which she drank down quickly. When the water was gone, Kay lit a cigarette. Diana studied Kay in profile. She looked thinner. Her skin had a gray pallor. While Kay smoked, Diana told her of the events of the last twenty-four hours, as well as everything they had found on the Donahue property. Kay didn't speak or ask questions. She listened, lighting cigarette after cigarette while Diana talked.

"That creature had my baby in his house all these years," Kay said finally.

"Yes."

"How did he do that? Why didn't she get away?"

BOOK: The Girl in the Woods

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